


The Ruins of a Legend, a Curse

by t0talcha0s



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Aftermath, F/F, If You're Worried, Love and obsession, Post-Canon, Sierra Madre (Fallout), The Whole Dead Money Crew is Mentioned, There is a Reference to Sex, good ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28101336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s
Summary: The Madre doesn’t eat people up, doesn’t spit them back out, it sits them in its stomach and dissolves them from the feet-up. Acid so harsh you feel it in your lungs first, your eyes, soles of your feet numb in your boots as you trod through her stomach. It’s when you go to leave, when you reach a moment that feels like the “end” of the Sierra Madre, that you recognize how much of you she’s devoured. Those who’d rotten in the depths of the Madre too long had forgotten a world without the acrid stench of digestion, the ever-present trap of death, the horror of false enemies and the beep of radio waves, what a world without pain felt like.
Relationships: Christine Royce/Veronica Santangelo
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	The Ruins of a Legend, a Curse

**Author's Note:**

> Required Listening: We used to wait - Arcade Fire

It’d been months since the wild card of the Sierra Madre had burst out of its gates and limped back out into the Mojave. The bomb still around his neck, his breath stuck scared in his throat, his pack filled heavy with gold. It became evident then, obvious even, that the Madre was never supposed to be cracked. What Elijah, what the Courier did was the murder of a myth. The end to a legend that was never made for letting go. 

The Sierra Madre, the building, the casino, the vault, saw only ripples of finality. The ghost people remain, stalk the slim streets of the villa, their legacy built within the very foundation of the structure, the first puffs of cloud into the air, into their lungs. Their suits cling tight to bodies that dissipated in the heat of the bomb. Their jaws lay open against the tile awaiting the snap of an ankle on their tongue. The holograms, tri-colored sentinels with their backs to the doors, pace the Madre’s floors sputtering and halting. The sky remains stained with the blood of those desperate enough to seek out her curse. Among it all, Christine. 

The voice of Vera Keyes wasn’t made to sit in the throat of a gay girl from the desert and, in turn, the throat began to reject it. The semblance of voice she was gifted left its scars among countless others, its last words echoed in both of its owners. Mute again. Every step of Christine’s journey she’s lost another portion of her ability to communicate, what was one more. 

She had watched as each of her companions left the Madre. They’d gathered around a campfire by the central fountain the final night, the Courier was good at that sort of thing, goodbyes and fire-tending. It was Dog who left first, or God maybe, something the Courier had said had morphed the two of them. Confused and curious, he was something new. Dean was next, openly uneasy when facing the hologram of his previous lover. 

“You mentioned Vegas, partner?” He asked the Courier, who’d told them all stories of his times in the Mojave, of the desert and the city and he talked about it like it was all his. He nodded at Dean and smiled. Astounding his smile, hard not to be wowed by, a smile that could move mountains and redirect rivers. 

“Better not see you performing at Gomorrah.” and then it’s just the two of them, he and Christine. He smiles at her and reaches his hand around the campfire for her to take. “You don’t have to stay here.” She shakes her head, squeezing her fingers into his palm. There was a time in her life where her hands were smooth and soft, uncalloused in her work as a scribe. Not since being a knight and especially not since the Sierra Madre. He nods and smiles at her. It really is scary sometimes, this man who cracked the vault, the wild card of the Madre, holding her hand. “I can come back for you.” 

No. 

She wishes she could say it, could verbalize the fact that she is no longer willing to bring anyone into her pain, her inability to release. Even if she can’t, he can, he must. She shakes her head vigorously, clasps both her hands around his. Looks him dead in the eyes. No, she tells him, I will be here but no one else ever should be. 

The Courier didn’t want to leave, or he did, he wanted to find a way to remove his collar and sell his gold, but he didn’t want to leave Christine. He left with the sunrise, handing her his holorifle and more ammo then she thinks she’d ever be able to use, and some playing cards. She rose an eyebrow. 

“You’ll get bored, thank me later.” And he was gone with that, with the inability to say goodbye permanently. 

Months later now, Christine has found a rhythm to her time in the casino. She has become its keeper, its warden, a captive in between its ribs that refuses to die. She refuses to wash away. She wields her rifle and stabs it into the flesh of the beast and she will survive in a world where nothing human can. She will become a hologram of herself, a flashing beacon of her history. And she holds on to her history, on to herself. Even though everything else she has claimed has been wrenched from her grasp she will not let go of herself.

_Christine_ she reminds herself of it every morning. She would write it down if she could but, well luckily her mind hasn’t forgotten how to remember yet. _Christine Royce. You are from the Mojave chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel. Your mother would braid your hair before you went to sleep so it would stay out of your mouth._ Her hair has grown, longer than it has been in a long time though it is just an inch or two. It is not long enough to bother her, nor is it long enough to scrape away with the too-sharp knives of the Madre. She sleeps in the casino, in a suite the ghost people won’t touch, in a suite that wasn’t Vera Keyes’. Her holorifle, the one the Courier gave her, her second Courier and her second savior, propped against the bedside table. _On your twelfth birthday you had your first kiss with a pretty paladin-in-training who inexplicably smelled like sweat and sunlight. She was taller than you and her hands were so clammy on your cheeks._ She makes her rounds through the Villa, trying to keep the Madre alive. If she can’t escape it she can guard it. Christine knows enough of it now, She skirts around the attention of the ghost people, wraps her arms in bandages to protect herself from the sting of the Cloud, tries to find the right thing to escape herself from the grip of dynamite around her throat. She doesn’t know what she would do if she found another person at its gates. _There was a girl._ Her memory reminds her _You were in love._

She stops herself, before realizing where she is. Stand in one spot in the Madre too long and you’ll be sucked down like quicksand like the slurp of noodles. Christine won’t let herself state the name, won’t let herself linger on the crater of love Elijah ripped out of her, focuses on the force of his obsession around her throat. 

Elijah’s dead. Or maybe he isn’t. The vault of the Sierra Madre sealed up with him inside of it and Christine supposes it doesn’t matter if it’s his corpse beneath her feet. She still wonders though. When she saw the Courier sprint through the halls, desperate and horrified, his hand at his throat hopelessly clawing at his collar there was a wave of guilt that washed over her. At her not being the one to do it, at failing her mission, at never getting to punish Elijah for the pain of her life. He was the one who separated her from her beloved, he was the one who brought her to the Big Empty, the reason she can’t write anymore, the reason she can’t talk, the pain and horror of her life belongs to him. It’s anger then. Hot and vicious and ripping through her stomach up into her throat and out of her lips in cruel little coughs. Now too, his legacy is nothing but pain. 

She hopes Veronica’s forgotten her. Not her touch, not her voice, somebody ought to remember that, but her. Hopes she remembers pleasant times of getting chewed out by the head scribe for slacking off in class together or sneaking of to tool closets to steal kisses or debating the validity of the codex in hushed tones in the final alley of the shooting range or holding hands crowded on a one-person bunk staring at the metal ceilings and pretending to see stars. Veronica should have those memories, the love, but let it be a different girl. Let her have the muscle memory of Christina’s first orgasm, gasping and overjoyed laughing and exhausted _always so fucking good with your hands Ronnie_ but let her repurpose the technique for the wild women of the wasteland. Let her keep the love, it’d do her such a disservice to forget, but let Christine’s outline warp and disfigure into another, a nameless no-one. There will always be the ghost of their love in that bunker, the happy shapes of scribes pressed together in the corridors, but Christine hopes Veronica can begin again, can let go of her. 

But Christine, too far gone for that. Too devoured. It is as if her legs are missing from the knee-down, red and sored and eaten away, chained by the neck, some exotic bug displayed on a grenade pin. She can’t convince herself there’s anything outside of the Madre that belongs to her anymore. Not Veronica, not the Brotherhood of Steel, not the Courier’s side. She stalks the Sierra Madre as its warden, circling her holding pattern around the casino, the villa, the entrance to the vault. She hasn’t entered, can’t anymore, this is her world. The danger and the terror and the horror. Christine couldn’t leave even if she dared to try at this point. She belongs to the Sierra Madre but she hopes, if she acts as its protector, she can at least stake her claim to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hella Brutal that the DLC's theme is "begin again, let go" and Christine doesn't get to. :( Love this girl love New Vegas.
> 
> Leave me your thoughts or a comment I'd love to know what y'all think!


End file.
